USMC Chooses Gen M3 PMAG

[HMM]

Awesome news indeed. Congrats!

[GH41]

I've always hated using aluminum magazines. Every single malfunction I've dealth in shooting the M4/M16 were due to worn-out feedlips.

How old were the aluminum magazines you had problems with? How many rounds through them? Not bashing you but I doubt you know. Do you know how many cycles a Pmag is good for? Probably less than you think and Duane is willing to admit. The same lobbyist that sold the USMC aluminum mags is now selling them plastic mags. For every guy you can quote having aluminum magazine issues I can quote another guy having Pmag issues. It is all about marketing and kool aid.

[opngrnd]

How old were the aluminum magazines you had problems with? How many rounds through them? Not bashing you but I doubt you know. Do you know how many cycles a Pmag is good for? Probably less than you think and Duane is willing to admit. The same lobbyist that sold the USMC aluminum mags is now selling them plastic mags. For every guy you can quote having aluminum magazine issues I can quote another guy having Pmag issues. It is all about marketing and kool aid.

I'm going to disagree with this to an extent. In my experience when GI mags start to go south people keep on using them or at least keep them for accountability, inventory, etc. Then they get issued to the next Joe Schmo to repeat the process. But when I have seen pmags break they tend to be obviously broken.

I am interested in seeing is what a couple hundred cycles of handing out mags to entire units for qual and then collecting them til the next cycle will bring. If the only improvement we see is that people actually throw them away when they become junk it would be a pretty good improvement as a whole.

[sevenhelmet]

^That's a solid argument for PMAGs, IMO.

[SPQR476]

Good decision by USMC.

Question: Does the window plastic age as well as the rest of the mag? I've seen a lot of clear plastic get brittle after exposure to the elements. Not being snarky here, just curious.

The window material we've used since 2012 is just as impervious to UV and age as the rest of the body, and is also just as chemically inert as the rest of the body. We pass the accelerated UV/sun exposure with flying colors, and we even test internally with higher mean and peak temperatures than required. On the chemical compatibility, we are impervious to everything in 03-02-045, including acetone, brake fluid, DEET, diesel, gas, and all the other lovely things with zero loss of surface hardness. Because the windows are a "like" material, they also bond to the body during molding, so it's almost impossible for them to come out. You can see that in a recent "kaboom" OOB firing with an M3 window. In this particular instance, the upper was completely destroyed, barrel split, etc. The window did crack, as can happen with a regular body, but it remained in place.

[SPQR476]

Sorry if I missed it but when will they be available?

As someone who was issued 30rd. GI mags with black followers back in the day, I'm more than happy to see the Corps get them ALL first and foremost.

Units are encouraged to start ordering immediately. Contracts and such are being worked out, but we're ready to deliver. Black is being ordered now, as the NSN was already in existence. Only thing we need to do while the paperwork got started is add the NSNs to the mag data plate, and that's almost complete. The MCT material mags will be prioritized for military orders, but we have a pretty crazy capacity, so commercial availability will be around SHOT show.

[opngrnd]

Every one probably needs at least one for Moto pictures....don't want to be the only untactical looking dude when your Bros are looking fly...

On a more serious note, my previous post outlines a reason why I purchased pmags for my vacation abroad. I had no idea what condition my issued mags would be in, and while I like USGI mags, the quality of what I could get my hands on was questionable due to demand. And there was literally no way I was willing to roll the dice on what might come out of the arms room. So I paid for pmags having a good idea of what to expect for serviceability, and being willing to waste the price of 10 mags as an investment in myself. (Supply guy ended up hooking me up with the latest and greatest USGI mags, but I don't regret the purchase I made given the info I had at the time.)

Politics aside, if these new mags work, and guys are going to get mags that work with their issued ammo and rifles, the more new mags the merrier. It utterly grinds my gears to be on the line trying to install confidence in some kid about their equipment and their ability to use it only to have that undermined by raggedy mags that are older than they are that no one is willing to stomp on and toss. I'm not going to call it the dumbest thing I put up with, but it's definitely up there.

[Firefly]

This is pretty neat. I keep GIs around but also have some OLD pmags that still work. I remember showing up to a rifle qual with a "gay ass plastic mag" the summer of '07. Boy do I feel vindicated.

No problems with a pmag. I keep Lancers as trainers but since 08, I've had pmags in my go bag.

How far Magpul has come. Wish I had stock and I dont mean an ACS

[SPQR476]

How old were the aluminum magazines you had problems with? How many rounds through them? Not bashing you but I doubt you know. Do you know how many cycles a Pmag is good for? Probably less than you think and Duane is willing to admit. The same lobbyist that sold the USMC aluminum mags is now selling them plastic mags. For every guy you can quote having aluminum magazine issues I can quote another guy having Pmag issues. It is all about marketing and kool aid.

PMAGs last for tens of thousands of rounds. Ask anyone who uses them for testing, as a lot of OEMs do, as it eliminates variables. They also are more resistant to damage that affects function from the penetrator tips of M855A1, so they actually last longer than aluminum magazines with that ammunition.

It is indeed true that it's entirely possible for an aluminum magazine body used in sterile conditions to outlast a PMAG body, as in a machine gun rental range seeing 100k without a lot of rough handling or something like that...but we're talking academics there, as magazines die from damage in the AR platform, not from being "shot out".

Aluminum and steel lipped mags die from bends to the feed lips or side walls that affect feeding performance or impinge follower travel. This is an insidious failure only really diagnosed through the occurrence of feeding problems, unless you're using the "feed lip gauge" that no one uses.

After surviving more impact damage than would be the end of any metal mag, a PMAG may indeed crack. However, as long as it retains rounds long enough to make it into the rifle, it will almost always feed fine. I demonstrate this from time to time with some mags from destructive testing that are cracked quite severely from deliberate, repeated drops--even some that I pry open to the point that you have to hold them together until you get them into the magwell. So a cracked PMAG isn't as likely to let you down if damage occurs while doing work, and it's a clear survey criteria when you get to the rear, so damaged mags aren't handed out again to the next poor guy in the armory line.

We can make a magazine right now, today, that will never break. The problem is that doing so loses the balance of rigidity and resilience that results in the feeding performance we have, the surface hardness to reduce grit, fouling, and normal friction problems, and resistance to body pressure impingement when bracing off a barricade or aggressively monopodding. Softer, "tougher" polymer compounds also allow alterations to the feeding geometry when they do survive impact, more like a metal mag. We've opted to stick with a failure mode that still preserves function, and gives crazy reliability, all the while surviving all the 03-02-045 rough handling tests--cold, hot, in the gun, out of the gun, etc.

The bottom line is also that the job of a magazine is to feed rounds reliably, and we've proven that in the multiple tests over the past several years. We do it better than any of the other mags tested, including other commercial magazines. In the collective body of all of the 03-02-045 type tests that have included the EMAG, M3 or M3 window, we still have ZERO magazine related stoppages. The one that I can speak of was 20,400 rounds of M855A1 in M4, M16A4, and M27. Two bad primers, one broken bolt, and one time that the bolt closed "slowly, but completely" after successfully chambering a round. We also cause less chamber face and feed ramp damage than any other mag when feeding M855A1. Some of the other tests were even more impressive, and I can direct folks in DoD activities where to get that data.

[BFS]

Congrats to Magpul.

Can you deliver the volumes of mags needed NOW?

Good on the USMC, im glad they are getting better hardware, but as a civilian shooter, my immediate concern is supply/price disruptions for commercial sales.